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This paper aims to identify some factors that reduce evasion of customs duties in developing countries. Following the recent literature on customs evasion, this paper proxys customs fraud by discrepancies in bilateral trade statistics. Estimates first show that the more frequently a product is imported, the more customs fraud reduces.

This paper explores the administrative challenges posed to developing countries as a result of the increasing emphasis in fiscal regimes for natural resource extraction since the Second World War on income-based taxes, including both corporate income and resource rent taxes, as opposed to royalties.

The journey from coercion to persuasion to drive tax compliance started gradually for the Rwanda Revenue Authority (RRA). This is shown in the mission and core value statements that underpin the tax administration’s activities in service delivery and trade facilitation.

Although field experiments in tax compliance represent a growing area of research, the literature has so far focussed exclusively on high and middle-income countries. This paper starts to fill this gap by reporting the results of a tax field experiment in Rwanda, while also highlighting some characteristics that may be common to other low-income countries.

Large-scale field experiments on tax compliance have been a thriving field of research in many regions of the world. However, Africa is still lagging behind, as administrative data from anonymised returns is available only in a handful of countries. To the best of our knowledge, there is as yet no published evidence of a tax field experiment from Africa.

This paper is the first in a series of three studies looking at tax compliance using administrative data from Rwanda. It discusses the use of administrative data for tax research – specifically anonymised taxpayers records, which have become increasingly available on the African continent.

Every piece of research contains data whether qualitative or quantitative. How that data is derived and used varies from case to case. With increasing time pressures and a need to validate assumptions, there is growing concern that sound ethics are seen as a luxury but as a recent discussion at IDS concluded, good data ethics are essential if research is to have meaningful impact on lives.

Bridging the gap between research, policy and practice is hardly a new imperative. At its heart is the virtue of research-based evidence informing policy and intervention design, which in turn increases the likelihood of desired outcomes.

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The STEPS Summer School in May 2018 will bring together highly-motivated doctoral and postdoctoral researchers, working in fields around development studies, science and technology studies, innovation and policy studies, and across agricultural, health, urban, water or energy issues. The aim is to explore theories, ideas, research methods and practical applications of STEPS thinking on pathways to sustainability.

Celebrating over 10 years since first being published in 2006, this year provides us with an opportunity to reflect critically on how the powercube has been applied and how it has evolved. So we are looking for your help and asking how has the powercube has assisted you in your work.

On Tuesday 12th December 2017, organisations worldwide are marking Universal Health Coverage day, calling for countries to provide affordable, quality health care for everyone, relating to the United Nations Sustainable Development Goal 3 (to ensure healthy lives and promote wellbeing for all at all ages).

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Eldis supports free and open access to useful and relevant research on global development challenges.

Eldis is hosted by the Knowledge, Impact and Policy team at the Institute of Development Studies in the UK but our services profile work by a growing global network of research organisations and knowledge brokers. These partners help to ensure that Eldis can present a truly global picture of development research. More...